Fenghua

This last week while Tina was enjoying the heat and humidity of Xiamen I traveled up to Fenghua for work. Exciting stuff I tell you....

But there were a few nice things about this trip, in addition to all of the work stuffs, one being that Fenghua is just south of Ningbo which itself is only about a two hour drive from Shanghai. That means that when I was there on Wednesday morning we were in the path of the total solar eclipse that all of China has been talking about for the last month or so.

Wednesday morning this was the view from my hotel at 07:00, kind of hazy but not too bad.
According to news reports lot of people had traveled to Shanghai in order to see the eclipse and were disappointed with heavy rains that totally blotted out the sun. All those people got to see was about 6 minutes of total darkness. Meanwhile down in Fenghua there was a little bit of blue sky and around quarter after nine the sky started to darken as if a big storm was coming in. I did what everyone warns you not to do and looked at the sun - it is blinding - but when you look away the burnt in image shows the crescent of the moon. Once the moon fully got in front of the sun it was a pretty cool sight, and not the total darkness that Shanghai was plunged into.
Can you see that little black spot in the sun? It's the moon. Yippee, a lot of workers and everyone stood outside for the time that the eclipse was full and firecrackers were going off in the distance. Once the sun started to peek back out everyone went back inside and off to work. Later that afternoon the skies got dark again, and then we were blessed with the huge rainstorms that had earlier hit Shanghai.

Fenghua is a small town, only about 500,000 people. You can wander around a little but there isn't really that much to see, there is a nice bridge over the river that winds through the town.
What Fenghua is known for, or what I'm told it is known for, is it's peaches. There was even a card in the hotel talking about the fact that they were in season, to be careful not to spill the juice on the carpet, and that drinking anything hot after eating a juicy peach can cause you tummy.
I brought home some peaches so that Tina and I could enjoy them. They are incredibly juicy and delicious, however most of them were bruised by the time that they made it all the way back to Xiamen. It was sad, albeit still a juicy sadness.....

Day 2 of Ningbo

Sunday morning we attempted to sleep in, figuring we would get some much needed sleep. We thought this would have been possible in Ipoh, but alas our schedule was too busy. Figuring that we had the weekend in Ningbo we would at least sleep in a little bit, as there is no construction to jolt us out of our dreams. Apparently, the universe is against us, right across from our hotel, was a very nice church, which happens to ring its bells every hour starting at 6am. We muscled through it, and finally woke up around 9am, pretty much exhausted from the day before.

So, day 2 in Ningbo we decided to take another route to see where that would lead us. We first went through the plaza where all the shops including Starbucks were located. The area around our hotel, called Tianyi, is considered pretty much the "downtown" of Ningbo.

We walked through an area that was a typical China town, clearly preserving some history before tearing down everything that resembles China of old. There was a quaint tower, called Ningbo Tianfeng Tower, which use to be the tallest building in Ningbo. It was originally constructed during the Tang Dynasty and then rebuilt during the Song Dynasty. You get a very nice view of the city, granted it's only 51 meters tall, but it is still worthwhile to climb.

Tianfeng Tower

The construction in Ningbo

After lunch our journey continued where we came upon an area that appeared to have buildings that went back about 100 years, though perhaps longer. The buildings were typical of what one expected when coming to China. It was quite interesting to see this neighbourhood as this is what we have been searching since arriving Ningbo. We really wanted to take photos, but since we were the only non-Chinese people, the locals saw us coming a few blocks away.

We managed to see a few buildings during our walks

We then found a ship museum close to the Lao Wai Tan area and checked that out. It was quite interesting to see the display of the different ships and how they improved during the various dynasties.

We learned about Mazu, the Chinese goddess of the sea and that over 1500 temples have been dedicated to this young women. Mazu, could cure the ill, predict the weather and announce when it was safe to travel. She died at the age of 28, and has been revered ever since. To this day, many sailors still pray to her before and after their journeys.

Later on, we walked back to the hotel for some much needed rest. Later, we enjoyed a nice dinner before retiring to bed, exhausted as usual.

It was great to have seen this city as it wasn't on our "must see, while we're in China" list and found some very interesting sites we were not expecting to see.

The next day, I flew back home, while Mark remained in Ningbo.

Ningbo

We weren't sure what to expect from Ningbo so first thing in the morning we took our little map, and started to walk and see where we would end up. It didn't take long to notice that Ningbo, was a clean city. The sidewalks are wide and free from garbage, and the roads have designated bus and motor scooter lanes. The locals generally follow the traffic lights .The city is quite attractive with the all the bridges, canals, parks and waterways.

Ningbo

Mark and I enjoy strolling through the alleys and snapping photos of the local produce and people at the markets back in Xiamen. We figured, that should be a good first place to tour, after all every city in China has markets. Well, easier said than done. We walked, walked and walked. We finally came to a covered market that was quite large but not like the markets we were hoping to encounter while here in Ningbo. We tried to find some of the alleys, and though we caught glimpses of some of the older architecture and streets, it appears that Ningbo like many Chinese cities, is currently destroying the older buildings, making room for the new high rises. According to one person who has lived here for the past 5 years, Ningbo like Xiamen has completely changed.

We came across Tianyi Pavilion Library, China's oldest library. The library was built during the period from 1561 to 1566 and houses over 300,000 books. The library itself is quite large and houses old mahjong's sets, along with tablets of writings dating back to the various dynasties.

Tianyi Ge

mahjong set

We then headed toward Moon Lake which is approximately 97 hectares of parkland. By this time we were too tired and hot to walk through it, but here's a glimpse.


Afterwards, we continued walking and weaving our way through the various streets, when we came to an area called Lao Wai Tan. This is where you will find your local Laowai or foreigner in English. It's quite similar to the French Concession in Shanghai, where the streets are cobble stoned and the buildings though new, have the appearance that they are a throw back to days gone by. There are many restaurants offering you a wide variety of dishes. We decided to go for the Irish pub.

We walked back to our hotel, luckily it wasn't too far and took some more photo's. It was a long and hot day a mere 36C. We were both very glad to get back to the hotel and shower before heading out to dinner.


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Ningbo from our hotel room. Tianyi Square

From Ipoh to Ningbo

So, no sooner then we returned to Xiamen then we hopped on another plane to head up to Ningbo. Ningbo is just south of Shanghai and is one of China's oldest cities, for more information check out the Ningbo Wikipedia entry.

I'm up here for work, and we figured that as long as I was going to be up here for a few days, Tina might as well come up and join me for the weekend. We had a nice enjoyable weekend, and first thing Monday morning Tina will head back to Xiamen and I'll stay up here for a few more days, heading back down to Xiamen on Tuesday night.

Once Tina is home on Monday, she'll download some of the photos that we took and load them into a blog along with some stories about the sights we saw and our thoughts of Ningbo....